


Of Soot And Slime

by Omorka



Category: Real Ghostbusters
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-22
Updated: 2010-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 18:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Egon and Ray are making an explosive mess in the lab, and they won't explain why; Peter investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Soot And Slime

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the prompt "Real Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman/Egon Spengler, What is Egon up to and why won't he tell Peter about it? (And what caused that explosion, anyway?)," at the Small Fandom Fest over on LJ.

"Whoops," Ray mumbled to himself, half-groaning as he quietly closed the door to the lab behind him. His face was completely coated with soot, as were his right hand, left sleeve, and much of the chest of his uniform; a small cloud of oily black smoke rolled out into the hallway behind him. He sighed and brushed at his cheek, grinning faintly at the smear of soot now decorating the back of his left hand.

Peter cleared his throat. "Hey, Ray. Everything okay in there?"

Ray jumped half a foot and whirled in Peter's direction. "Huh?" he replied, reaching out to steady himself against the doorframe, then cringing as he saw the handprint he'd just left. "Uh, yeah, it's fine." He scrubbed at the wall with the back of his right sleeve and succeeded in turning the handprint into an unrecognizable smudge. "I wired a capacitor in backwards and didn't catch it before Egon connected the power supply," he said, a sheepish grin creeping over his sooty face. "But I think we can fix it. I just need to pick up another one."

Peter nodded. "So what are you two evil geniuses working on this week?"

Ray went slightly pale underneath the dark streaks. "Um, gosh, Peter, what makes you - I mean, loosely speaking it's an ectoplasmic beacon, but -" He tripped over his tongue and fell silent, eyes darting.

"You sure you're okay?" Peter closed on Ray. He'd have been able to tell that Ray was trying to hide something even without any of his psychology degrees; as it was, the engineer's flailing to avoid outright lying to him was about as blatant as it could get. "You don't look okay."

Ray's eyes brightened. "Maybe you're right," he mused. "Maybe I inhaled too much smoke when the capacitor blew. Let me scrub this off my face and then run outside to get some fresh air." He scurried a dozen steps down the hall and darted into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

One eyebrow raised, Peter gently pushed the lab door open. "Hey, Egon," he called, "anything you need?"

Egon let go of the tool he was holding at the sound of Peter's voice and whirled around, one hand shoving something on the bench into a pile of springs and wires. "You startled me," he explained unnecessarily, re-adjusting his glasses - a classic time-buying move. Even Egon couldn't always think fast enough to stay ahead of him. "Yes, everything is fine, or at least it will be when Ray replaces the resistor array and the capacitor that went out with it."

Peter nodded slowly. "Okay. You need me to get anything for you, you guys let me know, okay?"

"Of course, Peter." Egon turned back to the bench, hunting for the soldering iron he'd dropped.

The lab door closed quietly. Peter paused for a moment at the bathroom door, listening to the sounds of running water and quiet, near-hysterical giggling before making his way downstairs.

\---

"So, do you know what the Mads are up to?" Peter tossed the question at Janine as she dropped the last of the afternoon's filing into the Paid Accounts drawer.

She fished in her top desk drawer for a pencil. "Only that Egon paid for the components out of his own account, and not the company's petty cash." The drawer slammed shut with a bang. "Why? You looking to give Ray a hard time over being the one to blow something up this time, Dr. V.?" She gave him a piercing stare that made him wonder what he'd done to earn her wrath.

He drew back, startled. "No, I just wanted to know how likely it was to happen again." Peter drummed his fingers on the back of the filing cabinet. "Wait, how did you know -"

"He explained it to Winston on his way out the door. Said he wanted to slip out before you could drill him about it." Janine twirled the pencil between her fingers. "I think he's embarrassed. His face was red. Redder than usual, I mean," she said in a slightly softer voice.

"That's just because he was scrubbing it. Got a face full of smoke when whatever-it-was popped on him." Was it? Peter replayed the conversation. Could Ray have been laughing out of embarrassment? It was unusual for him to be the one to blow up an experiment - usually his engineer's hands were pretty steady. Egon's shoddy soldering and the occasional theoretical miscalculation were the usual causes of lab explosions. Then again, Egon's were usually big enough to shake the building - a "pop" and a puff of soot were remarkably small on his scale. Maybe he had been too hard on Ray.

But what were they _doing_ in there, anyway?

Winston slid out from under Ecto. "Go easy on him, man. He seemed a little shaken up, whatever it was that did it," he urged, setting a wrench down on the concrete floor.

Peter scratched the back of his head. "I don't even know what it is that I'm going easy on him for," he protested.

Janine and Winston shared a glance, but neither one said anything. Another soft _phoomp!_ echoed down from upstairs.

\---

"They've been in there all day," Peter complained in Winston's general direction.

"No, they haven't," Winston contradicted him. "Ray's been in and out of there five or six times, not counting going out to the electronics shop two blocks over, after you grilled him about the explosion." He turned another page of the paperback balanced on the arm of the overstuffed chair.

"I wasn't grilling him!" Peter kicked off his shoes and sprawled out on the sofa. "I'm just concerned about them. Overwork and everything." He reached for the TV remote. "Well, that and I want to know if there's a big explosion coming."

As if on cue, a loud metallic _crack!_ sounded from the lab above them, followed by a yelp from Ray and a bellow from Egon. Winston and Peter were on their feet instantly, and halfway up the stairs before they noticed the acrid smell.

"I'll get the fire extinguisher," Winston called, darting into the hall closet. Peter nodded and continued his race to the lab.

Another billow of heavy black smoke rolled into his face as he yanked the door open. Peter coughed and tugged his t-shirt up over his nose and mouth; visibility in the room was nearly zero, but he thought he could see at least one moving figure between himself and the window. He plunged into the inky cloud and almost immediately stumbled over something heavy and wooden - the remains of a lab bench, by the feel of it.

"Egon? Ray? Egon!" he shouted into the miasma.

A hand caught at his elbow. "Peter? Peter, we're here; I think Egon's unconscious," Ray's voice said from somewhere near his knees. Peter reached down; at floor level, the smoke was the consistency of heavy fog, and Egon was just visible, stretched out at the foot of the broken bench. Peter scooped up his friend by the shoulders as Ray scuttled around to grab his feet; ahead of them, the fire extinguisher went off with a whoosh as Winston arrived.

\---

Egon shook his head and blinked awake, his skull pounding, his eyes trying to track and failing. It took him several minutes to reason out why. "Peter?" he called out into the dimmed room. "May I have my glasses back, please?"

"Here you go." Peter's hand closed on Egon's as he passed them back. Egon's fingers flexed, pressing back briefly, before he settled the red frames precariously on his nose again. "Now," Peter continued as he sat back in the kitchen chair someone had dragged back into the den, "you wanna tell me what that was all about?"

Egon swallowed. "All things being equal," he hedged, "I'd prefer not to."

"Don't think I'd understand it?" Peter's eyebrows arched.

"No, no, that's not it at all." Egon glanced at Peter, then away, and sighed deeply. "Very well, Ray and I were trying to assemble an ectoplasm repulser array."

Peter thought about that for a moment. "So, something that would shove a ghost backwards, instead of pulling him towards us, like the streams do? Okay, I guess I can theoretically see how that would be useful, but we'd have to rewrite several of our strategies to take advantage of that."

Egon shook his head. "It's not that focused. Not yet, anyway. Currently, it's half the size of a proton pack and requires approximately the same power draw; we're trying to miniaturize it."

"So, it's like one of those ultrasonic pest repellents, except for ghosts?" Peter chewed on his lip, thinking. "Yeah, okay, there might be a market for those if you can fix the power problem. It'd put us out of business eventually, though, wouldn't it?"

"No, it would just change the average locus of haunting activity to someplace other than the city, and that assumes that everyone buys one. But that's not what we were building it for." Egon looked faintly pained. "Right now the range is approximately five yards, at least for Slimer. We hypothesize it would be roughly the same for any Class Five or lower spirit."

"So that's why he hasn't been around today." Peter nodded. "So why were you and Ray sneaking around about it? Hell, he deliberately mislead me earlier about what it did."

Egon was silent for a long moment. Finally, he met Peter's eyes sheepishly. "We were hoping to present you with the first working prototype as a birthday present."

"Wait, what?" Peter blinked at his partner. "You guys were futzing with something dangerous enough that Ray managed to blow it up - for my _birthday_?"

"The final device itself is perfectly safe," Egon protested. "There's just a tricky matter of balancing the power input and output at the -"

"No, no," Peter interrupted, "dammit, Egon, I wasn't accusing you of putting _me_ in danger."

"Then what -"

"I'm mad because the two of you put yourselves in danger for something as trivial as my birthday." Peter glowered at his friend. "Seriously, my not getting slimed is not worth you risking life and limb over."

"Ray said you'd be upset," Egon sighed. "I suppose I should have trusted his judgement." He rubbed one hand slowly down his face. "I just - it's been getting worse, Peter; have you noticed?"

Peter winced theatrically. "Yeah, I kind of have, although I figured it was just me being fussy. They really are targeting me more?"

"Significantly more than can be accounted for by chance. Slimer says it's something about your smell, but Ray doesn't think it's physical scent at all." Egon pushed himself up to a seated position and leaned towards Peter; the throbbing in his head was fading. "Whether it's somehow due to repeated applications of ectoplasm or the continued development of psychic talents on your part -"

"- Which we've already established I think is a crock -" Peter jumped in.

"- You're becoming a positive ghost attractor, Peter. On the one hand, that's often useful for us, as an inordinate number of our standard 'plays' involve using you as the bait." Egon clasped his hands uncomfortably, then continued, "But it also means that you're the focus of danger more often than not. I couldn't - Ray and I don't want to see you hurt."

"So you put yourselves in harm's way to build a gadget to even the score up. No, to put yourselves - and Winston, too - in harm's way instead of me." Peter ran a hand through his hair, then glared at Egon. "Were you going to lie to me about what it did?"

Egon looked hurt. "Of course not, Peter. We were merely going to phrase it in terms of preventing you from being slimed as often."

"And hope that I wouldn't make the obvious connection," Peter growled in exasperation. Egon cringed; Peter held the frown for a fraction of a second and then relented. "Come on, Spengs. You know I'd never forgive myself if something happened to you on a bust, especially if it could have - should have - been me."

"And I," Egon retorted, "would never be able to forgive myself if something happened to you that I knew was in my intellectual ability to prevent. And the same is true of Raymond."

Peter slumped in the hard wooden chair. "Yeah, I know." On impulse, he slid out of the chair and eased next to Egon on the sofa. "We all look out for each other the best that we can, big guy. It's all we can do, in this biz. But - can we try and do it without blowing up the lab? If Ray's hands aren't steady enough for it, I'm not sure I wanna run around wearing it, even if you think it's safe."

Tentatively, carefully, calculatedly, one long arm curled around Peter's shoulders. "If you say so," was all Egon said, but there was a tiny tremor in his deep voice.

Peter glanced over at Egon, then reached over and gently settled his friend's head on his own broad shoulder. "I do," he whispered.

Egon settled his weight against Peter. "Then what _do_ you want for your birthday?" he asked.

Peter glanced down to see precisely how mischievous Egon's expression was, but the physicist was pretending to be half-asleep. He'd probably misheard the hint of the come-on, anyway. Still, he held on until Egon's breathing evened out, and Spengs really was asleep in his arms.


End file.
